Abstract
In few (if any) realms is the now well-established and extensively examined ‘ought/is’ dilemma of more practical significance to a greater number of people than in the arena of public policy. It is through public policy that governments decide both which societal goals to pursue and how to (best) pursue them – essentially, deciding, in the famous maxim of Harold Laswell, ‘who gets what, when, [and] how’.
The fundamental purpose of this pithy and extremely engaging book is ‘to offer a framework for answering questions about what … government[s] ought to do’ when confronted with increasingly complex policy dilemmas that involve competing moral values (p. 1). Don Welch cautions (p. 2) that he is not seeking to provide definitive answers to such questions, but rather to supply the tools needed ‘to improve the quality of individual and collective deliberation about our responses’ and, in so doing, ‘establish a sure footing for ethical reflection about public policy decision making’. As Welch correctly notes (p. 2), discussions concerning how to most effectively respond to policy dilemmas are at their heart ‘moral conversation[s]’.
Welch identifies (p. 2) in turn the following five ‘benchmarks’ ‘to be used in the moral evaluation of public policy: Benefit, Effectiveness, Fairness, Fidelity and Legitimacy’. The initial two reflect a concern that governments pursue policies that effectively generate benefits (and avoid harms). Fairness requires that policies distribute benefits and burdens in a just manner, while fidelity concerns the obligation of government to act respectfully towards all those affected by its actions; and legitimacy captures judgements about the appropriateness of government serving as the instrument to address the dilemma in question. Welch contends (p. 2) that empirical evidence suggests that those benchmarks are the focus of ‘a broad-based national consensus … [concerning] what we as a nation want government to do’ (he is referring to the citizens of the United States, but it does not seem unreasonable to presume that his conclusions would be equally applicable to other contemporary liberal democracies).
Importantly, Welch emphasises (p. 3) that the insertion of ethics into public policy decision-making does not necessitate that policy-makers engage in ‘endless quixotic quests’, but requires only that they ‘look past how things are and are likely to be, and … consider how things ought to be’ (emphasis added). A Guide to Ethics and Public Policy presents a readily accessible yet analytically rigorous argument that wonderfully illuminates the critical relationship between ethics and public policy.